


Sightseeing on the Shores of Yesterday

by leonidaslion



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-11
Updated: 2011-04-11
Packaged: 2017-10-17 22:13:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The flesh makes things difficult sometimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sightseeing on the Shores of Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emerald_embers](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=emerald_embers).



> [Sightseeing on the Shores of Yesterday: The Art](http://dreamlittleyo.livejournal.com/176339.html)

The flesh makes things difficult sometimes.

Once, in a place which would one day be known as Barcelona, he stood on a dock overlooking the sea. There was a woman there, a woman he knew. He knows all mortals, of course, always, but he knew this one better than most then, when he stood housed in flesh. She reached for him with trembling, lined hands and a disbelieving face. She spoke a word—a name which had once belonged to the flesh he inhabited, and which would belong to it again once Castiel fulfilled his current purpose—and his chest constricted in an uncomfortable manner.

In his heart, he told her no. He told her that it was a mistake.

In the woman’s tongue—a tongue that has long since died on this earth—he said her name. He apologized for the long years apart—a blink of an eye to an angel, and Castiel always forgets, when he is about his Father’s business, that mortals endure the passage of time differently.

The woman’s hand touched his face, and the flesh Castiel wore shivered. _So young_ , the woman whispered in her language. It had been the language of princes once—a proud people—but there were no princes left on that overcast afternoon. The docks upon which Castiel stood were rotting. They would be gone before the proud people of the Empire came to this place. This woman would be gone, her bones laid reverently beneath the earth. The earth would embrace her soon, with her white hair and her seamed, papery skin.

But oh, she had been young as well the last time he saw these shores. She had been so very young, and so very beautiful, and the flesh Castiel wore had not wished to leave.

But the man had given his permission, he had agreed to house Castiel’s essence, and the Will of the Father had dictated that they travel elsewhere for a time. The man had been silent these many years, but he stirred within Castiel now, he roused from his sleep, and Castiel subsided.

She was beautiful still, this woman. She was lovely as Castiel gazed upon her with his inner eyes—with the sight of one of God’s warriors. Her soul was fresh and the color of fresh mint.

Castiel would have shared this sight with his vessel. He would have shared this moment, which he should not have been permitting to pass, but which he allowed all the same. Things were not so clear anymore, after years within this flesh. The Word came less clearly. His thoughts and heart were confused.

On the shore of that distant sea, he stood aside somewhat. He allowed his vessel to look out at this woman, at this beauty, and waited.

The man blinked carefully. He turned his head, scanning the horizon of the sea, looking upon the topography of the land. He looked at the woman, registered her presence, and his eyes passed over her again. They dismissed her as a stranger.

Castiel nudged his vessel back, encouraging him to take a second look, but instead the man sank down. He disappeared within Castiel, deep as a stone settling on the bottom of the ocean floor, and left Castiel standing there alone.

How could this body know her, and yet the soul within it be so blind?

It confused Castiel more than the physical responses themselves, and Castiel regretted the way the woman’s eyes brimmed with tears. He kissed her gently on the cheek—an angel’s chaste kiss, and not what he sensed she needed, but it was the only thing he had to give. He kissed her and then he left her there, because his task was not yet done. He had need of this flesh for a time longer, just a blink of an eye. Just a beat of a heart.

As a favor, he did not return again until she had gone. He did not wish to put her through that again. He should not have put her through it a first time.

Now, as Castiel slips into his next vessel, as he clothes himself in mortal flesh and feels it settling around him with all its confusing complexities, he does not linger on the man’s doorstep. He does not turn back to look in through the window, or gaze upon the life his new flesh has left behind.

Castiel understands now—not everything, but more. He has learned. He knows that mortal eyes are different from an immortal’s gaze. Humans cannot see what he does. They cannot know what he knows.

Mortal lives are for the mortals who live them, and once the orchid has been plucked from the stem, it cannot be returned again. Castiel ensured that the man who was once Jimmy Novak knew that when he agreed to serve.

But it is not until he looks into his charge’s green, wounded eyes—it is not until he looks into Dean Winchester’s soul ( _such beauty there, such glorious goodness_ )—that Castiel understands why the woman on that long ago shore looked upon a familiar face which did not know her for herself, and cried.


End file.
